1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a plasma reactor having ceiling and a workpiece support for interposition therebetween of a workpiece to be processed, such as a semiconductor wafer, wherein the processing gases are fed through the ceiling directly over the workpiece.
2. Background Art
The inductively coupled plasma reactor disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,948,458 has a planar coil overlying the chamber ceiling and facing the semiconductor wafer being processed, thereby providing an optimally uniform RF induction field over the surface of the wafer. For this purpose, the ceiling, which seals the reactor chamber so that it can be evacuated, must be fairly transmissive to the RF induction field from the coil and is therefore a dielectric, such as quartz. It should be noted here that such a ceiling could be made from dielectric materials other than quartz, such as aluminum oxide. However other materials such as aluminum oxide tend produce greater contamination than quartz due to sputtering.
Polymerization during a plasma etch process requires a careful balance of etchant and polymer, the etchant concentration typically being at a depletion level to avoid inhibition of appropriate polymer formation. As a result, a significant proportion of etchant ions and radicals formed near the wafer periphery are consumed before reaching the wafer center, further depleting the etch ion concentration over the wafer center. This leads to a lower etch rate or etch stopping near the wafer center.
One reason that there are more ions at the wafer periphery is that introduction of the etchant precursor gas from the side can produce a non-uniform etchant ion/radical distribution favoring the side. Many of the etchant ion/radical-forming energetic electrons generated near the side are lost to collisions with other species before reaching the wafer center, thus reducing the etchant ion concentration at the wafer center. The relative lack of etchant ions near the wafer center permits faster formation of polymer at the wafer center, so much so that in some cases the polymer formation overwhelms the etch process and stops it, particularly at feature sizes less than 0.5 microns. Such etch stopping may occur either at larger etch features, at shallower etch depths or at shorter etch times.
The converse of the foregoing is that the relative plentitude of etchant ions and radicals near the wafer periphery can, under selected processing conditions, so impede polymerization as to impair etch selectivity, possibly leading to punchthrough of the underlying layer near the wafer periphery, in addition to causing a much higher etch rate at the wafer periphery.
From the foregoing, it is clear that there is a trade-off between avoiding punchthrough at the wafer edge and avoiding etch stopping at the wafer center, dictating a very narrow window of processing parameters within which a successful etch process may be realized across the entire wafer surface. To avoid the overetching the wafer periphery, the concentration of etchant ions and radicals in the plasma relative to other particles (e.g., polymer-forming ions or radicals and carbon) may be decreased, which risks etch-stopping at the wafer center. Conversely, to avoid etch-stopping at the wafer center, the concentration of etchant ions in the plasma may be increased, which risks punchthrough or faceting near the wafer periphery. Thus, the process window for successfully etching the entire wafer is very narrow.
In the parallel plate plasma reactor, the concentration of free fluorine in the plasma can be controlled by introducing a scavenging article, such as silicon, near or at the top of the reactor chamber. Silicon atoms physically etched (sputtered), chemically etched or reactive ion etched from the scavenging article combine with the fluorine ions and radicals, thereby reducing fluorine ion and radical concentration in the plasma. By controlling the rate at which silicon atoms are physically or chemically etched from the scavenging article, the amount of free fluorine ions and radicals in the plasma may be regulated (e.g., reduced) as desired to meet the narrow processing window mentioned above. The physical or chemical etch rates can be controlled by controlling the temperature of the scavenging article and/or by controlling the rate of ion-bombardment on the scavenging article. The surface of the scavenging article may be activated (to release silicon atoms into the plasma) either by RF power or by heating. By holding the scavenging article's temperature below the temperature at which polymerization occurs, the polymers accumulate on the scavenging article surface and block any release therefrom of silicon atoms. By raising the scavenging article's temperature above the condensation temperature, the surface is free from polymers, thus permitting the release of silicon atoms into the plasma. Further increasing the temperature increases the rate at which silicon atoms are released from the scavenging surface into the plasma. Reducing the free fluorine concentration in this manner has the effect of not only decreasing etch rate but also enriching the carbon content of the polymer, thus increasing the effect of the polymer on the etch process to guard against punch through at the wafer periphery, but increasing the risk of etch stopping at the wafer center. Conversely, increasing the free fluorine, concentration not only increases the etch rate but also depletes the carbon content of the polymer, thus decreasing the effect of polymerization on the etch process, thus decreasing the risk of etch stopping at the wafer center but weakening the protection against punch through at the wafer periphery.
Thus, in order to meet the narrow processing window, in general the relative concentrations of free fluorine and polymer-forming ions and radicals in the plasma may be controlled by regulating the temperature of a scavenging article in the chamber.
It is an object of the invention to eliminate or reduce consumable materials such as quartz or ceramics in the chamber walls, so as to avoid depletion of plasma ions near the chamber walls and consumption of expensive reactor components through etching of such materials.
It is a further object of the invention to enhance processing uniformity at the wafer center relative to the wafer periphery in such a reactor by providing a uniform etch and polymer precursor gas distribution. Specifically, it is an object of the invention to introduce such gas from an optimum radial location of the chamber, such as from the chamber center and/or from the chamber periphery, whichever optimizes process uniformity across the wafer surface. For example, where etch rate is low at the wafer center and high at the wafer periphery, the gas is preferably introduced from the center of the ceiling rather than from near the periphery of the ceiling.